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Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
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Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the toughfibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Let us learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least habit of dominion over the palate has certain good effects not easily estimated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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To the geologist the sea is the only firmament...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its unmaskers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The forest waves, the morning breaks,
The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes,
Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be
And life pulsates in rock or tree.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Persons are fine things, but they cost so much! for thee I must pay me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the characterwhich draws them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quote of the day
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
Richard Adams
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Born:
May 25, 1803
Died:
April 27, 1882
(aged 78)
Bio:
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
Known for:
Self-Reliance (1841)
Nature (1836)
Essays: First Series (1841)
Representative Men
The Conduct of Life (1860)
Most used words:
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nature
life
thought
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